October 18, 2010

"Says who?"

It started innocently enough. Pete Carroll posted a picture of himself with former President Clinton (BTW, isn't it kinda neat that we have a Coach that can make THAT meeting happen?), with this caption: "Great visiting w/ Pres. Clinton this AM... he's competing hard for these midterm elections & has an awesome message."

One thing I'm actually proud of about this blog is that I don't do the usual frightened avoidance of politics... I'm a liberal, a Democrat, a progressive. I don't feel like I should hide that. In fact, I sort of feel a duty not to cede the arena to conservative sports fans... I HATE the assumption that NFL fans are all reactionary Republicans (I get this from some of my most hard-core liberal friends), so I feel somewhat obligated to present myself as a counterexample. Yes, liberals can be NFL fans. In fact, quite a few liberals are Seahawks fans (no surprise, given the political culture of the Pacific Northwest).

I already knew that Coach Carroll had campaigned for Obama back in 2008, but it was exciting to see that he's still politically active, and for the party I support. Innocuously enough, I tweeted that it was great to see Carroll politically engaged, just like Matt Hasselbeck has been for the GOP. It wasn't an indictment of Hasselbeck; I knew he signed an open letter supporting Bush's re-election in 2004, and we all remember him attending a GOP fundraiser with Bush in the Seattle area in 2007... The fact that Beck was a Republican in no way affected my adoration for him as the Seahawks' QB, leader, and my favorite player. You mean a millionaire is a Republican? Huge shock! I was just happy that he wasn't an overt, vocal homophobe, sexist or racist.

The evidence seemed pretty clear that Matthew Hasselbeck was a Republican. Then our quarterback tweeted this, directly at me:

@DKSB17 Says who?

Ouch. I have longed for the day Matt Hasselbeck would notice my support or my other pro-Seahawks efforts on Twitter, and THIS is what he responds to? I wanted to crawl into a hole and die. I was mortified. I tried to make it clear that my tweets were not intended as an attack; My assumption that he was a Republican was simply based upon available public evidence. Further, I have NO problem with him being a conservative. I'd PREFER that all the Seahawks players and coaches shared my political views, but I know that's impossible (and would be sorta creepy)... So I just deal, you know?

So, I want to publicly state that if Matt Hasselbeck no longer considers himself a Republican, or if he never did (despite his GOP-supporting actions), I apologize for reaching that conclusion. I know a LOT of people hate having a partisan labels slapped upon them, even if they vote for the same party EVERY TIME... My mom is like that; Has NEVER voted for anyone but Republican candidates, but swears she "votes for the person, not the party."

Well, I vote for the party almost every time, because it makes a BIG difference which party controls the levers of power in the United States. I prefer the policies of the Democrats, so I vote for them. In any case, while I'm not going to suddenly get apolitical here or on twitter, I'm still sort of nauseous over the notion that THIS is how I ended up interacting with my favorite Seahawk.

So, if you happen to read this, Matthew, I hope we're cool. :)

What do you think, sirs?

MAJOR UPDATE: Hasselbeck @DKSB17 We're cool dude. Maybe I am a little like your mom. Great story about the Mack Strong photo with #43. It'll be in my book someday.

18 comments:

I don't think he took offense about anything you wrote so I wouldn't worry about it. I just think that Hasselbeck would much rather be considered a Christian rather than a Republican considering the horrible PR Republicans dish out as supposed Christian representatives. You're mention of homophobes, sexists and racists as a possible belief system of a Republican is one reason why Hasselbeck might not want to bear such a label.

What's the difference between a Republican and Democratic politician? They both want to screw you, but the Democrat pretends to feel bad about it.

I'm the only person that I know of that voted against Bush in 2000, and for him in 2004. After reading Kerry's book, there was no way I could vote for him. The best way to describe my political affiliation would be to call me a progressive conservative with socialist tendencies. Or you could say I'm middle of the road. I think that bi-partisanship sucks. But more than that, I really think that the system has become so bureaucratic that the only way to get anything accomplished is to be a slave to pacs or to become border line criminal. (I may have become a bit jaded.) Our political system is great, but just like any other system, its implementation is not only being misused, but abused by both parties. Unfortunately I don't see an easy fix.

No on to the Seahawks.

Do you think that Jon Ryan will make sure his next punt goes out of bounds, instead of slicing towards the middle of the field?

Please no more politics, liberals are killing my beloved state of Alaska, I used to be able to hunt and fish without needing the supermarket. Alas this is no more as liberal imposed restrictions are killing my subsistance way of life.

I'm in the same pool as you, Johnny. I'm a diehard Seahawks fan as well as a diehard liberal. I do have to say that I'm honestly surprised how many pro athletes are conservative. I mean, I know that a lot of them are highly religious, but it's slightly strange seeing how many of them have right wing political beliefs (compared to, say, Hollywood where there is a large majority of liberals). I mean, Peyton Manning and his family are all Republican supporters as are HOFers Troy Aikman, Dan Marino and John Elway. Of course, knowing that, it's not too surprising that Hass may support some right-wing policies.

But they're athletes. We don't care about their political beliefs since that's not why we support them. We support them because they play for our favorite teams and if they're far right or far left, well, *shrugs*, that's their prerogative.

Might you clarify your comments? You have a republican governor, a republican house of representatives, a republican senate in Alaska. You have three current republican congressional reps and senator. One mere democrat in congress. Is the existence of any democrat too much?

What are you going to do when you have a Tea Party candidate representing you?

Tea Party sucks, I hate all politics. I do however love the Seahawks. Our state lives on the the federal dollar so we are at the mercy of the Demo congress. I love DKSB let's just keep the talk to how much we hate other teams.

Nice post, DKSB. Despite never meeting him, I am confident enough in my read of people to know Hasselbeck is solid guy, good leader, and committed father. I always start there, and try to keep the politics and religious stuff on the side. The unfortunate truth is that we no longer are capable of having a reasoned discussion about anything political or religious. Those things are much more often used to divide people than bring them together. Thankfully, we have things like football to break through those boundaries. That's part of why I always feel so patriotic during the national anthem. We're lucky to live in a country where we get to spend time on such frivolous things.

I, for one, especially these days, look to my beloved Seahawks as an escape from the depressing news and embarassing political process I have to see everyday. When I log on to Seahawks fan sites like DKSB I do it because of the fantastic and passionate discussion about a team I love with people I FINALLY have something in common with. Even when it comes to the teams we despise, we all share a common love of football and for our favorite team. Having said that, using a fan site like this as a forum to discuss one of the 3 "no-no topics" (Politics, Religion or Abortion) is flat out in bad taste. It doesn't come off as anything other than petty and immature. Let's leave that shit to the twits on MSNBC and FOX, shall we?DKSB is one of my favorite Seahawk fan sites because I so completely identify with the author's sports narrative, opinion and perspective. Here's to it staying that way.Z

This isn't a political blog, but it is MY blog. If I feel like bringing up something political, I'm gonna keep doing it. For one thing, we CANNOT divorce sports from politics, no matter how distasteful some of us might find the grubby realities of political life.

We HAVE the Seahawks because of politics, guys. If that campaign and vote for the stadium never happened, the team is L.A., y'all. So when we pretend like we can draw a bright line between politics and sports, we are fooling ourselves.

Finally, I'm a political scientist by trade, and a political activist by choice. I'm not here to go all Rachel Maddow on your asses, but I'm not going to chop of that entire branch of my psyche when I log in here.

You are right, it is YOUR blog, and you certainly can write whatever you please on it. However, we don't have the Seahawks because of politics, we have the Seahawks because of Paul Allen. We have Qwest Field because of Paul Allen and his team negotiating with the State of Washington to share the overall funding for the stadium. The State of Washington procured their portion of the funding through "politics" as you put it. So let's not let "politics" take too much credit, shall we?And finally, if this is how you plan on managing your blog because you would rather rant about your political opinions than talk about meaningful Seahawk topics, then you can count me out.

Zak,I have to disagree. If Paul Allen hadn't waged an overt POLITICAL campaign to win the referendum vote on building a new stadium, they're the L.A. Seahawks. If the majority of voters (and voting is, as you know, a political action) had voted the other way, the team would be gone.

I'd hardly call what I've been doing "ranting" about politics... I certainly don't want to lose a reader, but you have every right to read or not read whatever you'd like online, just as I have the right to write whatever I damn well please.

I'm doing this because I am passionate about the Seahawks. I'm also passionate about tons of other things: The Red Sox, sci-fi movies, my family, and, yes, politics. Some of that stuff is going to spill onto the blog, because those passions drive this project.

I have no staff, no editors, and no pressing need to make this site a profit machine. When the blog started, a lot of people told me stop using profanity, or they'd stop reading. Well, I kindly told them to go start their own blogs, or go read another one that didn't offend their delicate sensibilities.

I hope you keep reading, Zak, but the second I start catering to individual readers by censoring myself is the exact moment this is no longer fun for me, or interesting for the vast majority of my readers.

I have to go with Johnny on this one. About a year ago Johnny stated something that pissed me off so much that I refused to read his blog for a while. Rationally I knew that it was not only his opinion, but his opinion on his blog. Irrationally I couldn't get over it. So I stayed away until I could look at his opinions as his again.

Sometimes it's hard to read someone that disagrees with you because you can't answer back quick enough. Have you ever noticed that we view a person's degree of intelligence based on how close their point of view is to ours? I disagree with a great deal of Mr. Peel's political views, but most of the time he states his argument in a logical, lucid format. When he doesn't? Well, that's when I get to disagree.

What keeps me coming back to this site is the fact that both of us feel that stealer fans were thrown away at birth and only the after birth was kept.

I don't like a great deal of his political opinions, but I do love his love of the Hawks. It would be great if you could stay, because I'd like to have someone that shares my political views on this site. Besides, he might not like your opinion, but he values it enough to post it. Shouldn't that, in itself, show that he is a decent human being that values other people's opinions?

Whoa... Steeler fans are placentas and embryonic fluid? I'm not sure if Johnny feels quite as much contempt for them as you do. Kind of depersonalizing them a tad don't you think? Maybe I'm misunderstanding you.

Oh Puhleeeez, everyone knows that anyone who thinks the slightest way different than I do in any way about anything automatically must be of highly questionable ancestry, sexual orientation, a terrorist, a communist, a reactionary, and especially a bad fan who definitely lives in their mom's basement.

Did I miss anything? The very reason that The Beard is the greatest source EVER for all Seahawk and any other news is simply because of the unbridled passion backed up with reasoned, intelligent arguments, and willingness to annoy the boring. If I wanted bland and sanitized for my protection, I'd only read the official blog. And sometimes that isn't bland and sanitized enough, either.

"If you surround yourself with Yes Men, you will make no mistake, but you will grow no wiser". - Shana Kemp

Let us unite in our hatred of all things that oppose our Beloved Hawks, both real and imagined. And perpetrate the unifying power of culture upon the bland, shrinkwrapped masses.

I live in Alaska and the short answer is - the Dems have screwed us at every opportunity.

3 times legislation has passed the House and passed the Senate with a majority but stalled by Dem filibusters. Byrd led one, Kerry led one, terrific WA Senator Cantwell led one. Back in the 90s, ANWR actually passed both Houses and was vetoed by Clinton.

Today? Oil drilling in deep water was banned after the Gulf spill in 4,000 feet of water. Never mind that proposed wells in Alaska are in 150 feet of water, the ban applied here, too. The Governor said Dept of Interior improperly applied this ban to which the Obama Admin replied, 'there's no ban on drilling ........ but no wells will be allowed.' Then the nationwide ban was lifted - except for Alaska.

Folks in NW Alaska pay $8/gal for oil to heat their houses while the Dems keep an ocean of oil locked up.

Meet Your Blogger

I've been a Twelve since 1983 (and I haven't missed a game since then). I've been a season-ticket holder since 1997, and I've been writing this blog since 2008. My all-time favorite Seahawks player is Dave Krieg, and my favorite current Seahawk is Russell Wilson. Thanks for stopping by! -Ramona P.